My memories of you should tell me your name. Instantly. But they don't. I can't remember. It's classic Italian, I'm certain, but none of the names I'm thinking of—Piero, Mario, Carlo, Frederico, Antonio, Vincenzo, Michelangelo—is right. A person could say I don't want to remember. Maybe. But I remember Core N'grato.

It's forty-five years ago ( I am fourteen), and your ten-year-old daughter is pulling me by my pants belt from our building hallway into your apartment. She tugs me into her bedroom, yelling "You're my sweeteeeee," and shows me what she has created with her GyroPaints. While I try to recognize images in the colors smeared on white cardboard, she sticks a cardboard princess tiara on her head and whirls inside her pink hulahoop singing. I'm amazed that she can keep the hoop around a middle without hips. She even twirls in reverse. A few times she sort of bends forward from the waist and wiggles her narrow bottom, still going, "We gonna twist, yeah, we gonna twist all night, oh baby." You leave the room after one spin and are gone. I thought that you must have something important to do because handsome, well-dressed men were special to me, and what they did was special. In fact, my mother often made complimentary remarks about types on TV. Her favorite phrase was, "Nobody else in the world could ever do that," referring to some dancer's spin, a singer's note, an actor's performance or some other excellence she adored.

Your daughter hands me a stained school copy-book and points to "Felipa D'Andrea" hand-printed on the cover in big, crooked letters. "Look at my name. S'pretty, right?" She hands me lemonade in a Thumbalina glass and some paints to spin with. Then she scratches my cardboard squares with her red-lacquered fingernails so that the wet images become ruined, and she screeches a long "meeeeeeee." At that moment the door bursts open. It's you shouting,

"Hey, stop you screaming, Felipa D'Andrea! Stupida! I gotta hear a race I bet money on. Whadda you, crazy?"

Felipa's laugh was like a plate of dancing pennies; her brown eyes widened while she spoke and she had corkscrew curls I wanted to touch. I don't know if she got scared when you burst into her room. I might have if I were her, but I think that I really welcomed that strong-dad toughness I thought you had. And I attributed a winner quality to such men.

My real father worked seven days a week at his shoe sales and repair store in some part of Ridgewood, about forty-five minutes away by bus. My mother worked with him from morning until ten p.m., bagging and unbagging footwear. My duty was to stay in the apartment and wait for their return. I was forbidden to travel to the store. I nap, listen to the radio and browse A, N and P, my only volumes of the Encyclopedia Americana. I also play with chemicals that I order from a chemical supply house, especially explosive sodium metal. I burned my face once with that. Mostly I watch my box turtle, Spartacus. He likes to nibble on the fresh cherries and grapefruit sections that I throw into his tank and make it smelly so that I have to clean it often, but I don't mind doing it. Also, I read about opera and listen to my records of arias, mostly the Italian ones, which I love the most and know the best.

When I visit, you open your door, saying, "Caam in, Richard," as if I am some important person. I had always heard that Italian people are warm and hospitable. In your kitchen with the green tin ceiling I watch you smoke twisted black cigars, drink beer from a bottle, and study betting sheets. Once you smacked a beautiful monarch butterfly dead. It must have come in through the open window. I loved butterflies, but I forgave you instantly. When you pulled off your work-shoes and dabbed iodine over the cuts on your feet with the glass applicator, I never even sensed a bad odor. You often walk around only in jockeys and sandals. After showering, you rub splashes of cologne between your hands and spread them on your trunk and legs. I'd never seen anybody use so much scent. One evening, before you go out alone, close shaven, wearing in a fawn linen suit, you brush the green feather in your hatband with your fingernail until the hairs stand straight up. Felipa, I, and the old Italian lady you brought from your mother's neighborhood to baby-sit watch you in awe.

"Pretty fancy, hah?" you say, "This here outfit is costed six hunred dollas!"

The old woman claps her palms and chants, "O che bel signore, bello, bello!"

Felipa said that you are a "bricklater." But when you dress up, you are a model right out of Howard's ad in the Sunday paper.

One rainy afternoon you answer my knock holding an open bottle of Ballantine's, and you shower me with "Caam in, Richard," and a sweep of your tanned, muscular arm. You look at me with a smile and add, "Or maybe I call you Ricardo—Ricardo my papa, owna farm in Agrigento and rest in heaven now."

Your gathering me in made me happy.

"How's Mrs. D'Andrea?" I ask.

Felipa had told me that her mother did "manic" on fingernails in a "saloon."

"She in tha beauty shop, teaching my daughter manicure. My daughter no learn nothing in school. I use to want God give me a boy, but now I don't want Him send me no more kids. They only trouble."

I thought of offering to help Felipa improve her crooked penmanship but decided that you might not appreciate hearing news of its poor quality or me, the messenger.

I'm sitting at your kitchen table, touching the artificial flowers in the garish Chinese vase standing on it. You put on a record of Perry Como singing "Anima e Cuore." It's not an aria, but I like it because you do, and I listen until it ends. When it's finished you replace it with Dean Martin singing "Ritorn' a Me." I had the feeling you were playing a concert just for me. A boy sometimes wants to be with his father and have his attention. I knew nothing about horse racing, but was pleased that you did. I used to imagine looking through your dark eyes and seeing the horses you bet on, nostrils flaring steam, quivering flanks, ears pricked forward, penises like an athlete's forearm while they pranced to the starting gate.

Then I hear you calling, "Hey, caam in here, Ricardo. You needa see something. "

I go through the living room to your bedroom with the windows facing the back fire-escape. You're smiling showing gold teeth and holding a deck of playing cards open like a Japanese fan, picture sides up.

"You like?" you ask. Naked women in hide-nothing poses look like they're writhing on sheepskin rugs. My face is burning. You go behind me, press your body against mine and touch me down there very gently, outside my clothing. I jump for a moment.

"You needa good friend like me," you say.

Inside the circle of you arms I am flooded. Your voice, warm body and cologne tinged with ale dominate everything. I had never had so many senses aroused at once, and so strongly. But I wouldn't have admitted that back then.

"Them is some cards, ain't they?" you say in my ear. "Hollywood ladies no compare."

I suddenly have to pee bad and try to move out of your hold. You drop your arms and I go through the living room, past dolls with staring eyes and painted smiles, to the front door. Then you appear, wearing only jockeys, holding the cards up, and, smiling, you say, "Ya want 'em, don't ya, Ricardo? They yours." And you shove them into my shirt pocket. I open the door and go out. I'm feeling disquieted from your touching me and your ability to get my consent so quickly, but I regret leaving.

You've given me a gift. Should a father give gifts? Mine had never given me what I'd call a real gift. Sometimes he tore a stick of Doublemint gum in two and gave me half. But nothing on my birthday. Never. At the table, he'd cut a piece of meat from his plate, dip it into ketchup, and fork it onto my dish. I'd eat it right away. It was always delicious.

I hide my thrilling gift in the closet in my room, in a corner of my brand-new aquarium under bags of sandstone and gravel. I had bought those with money I took from my mother's purse early mornings while she was still asleep. According to my plan, once I completed building my city of fishes I could gaze at their mini-world, an endless spectacle of multicolored swimmers blasting the darkness from that vast living room where I am alone every night, waiting. I'll visit Grey's Petshop again and buy fishes, aquatic plants and an aerating system with my mother's money. The people there are nice; they never ask me where the money came from. But one day in class I think: what if my mother reaches into the bottom of the tank on my closet floor? I knew her curiosity. I had found, on her bedroom dresser, an empty envelope addressed to me with sex information that I had sent for. She said she had torn up the contents and flushed them down the toilet.

I hurry home, find the cards where I had put them, take them out of their case and examine them on my bed. I still couldn't believe I owned them. One woman (I called women "ladies" then) styled her hair in plaits with loops of ribbon. Another was with a different man in each picture she appeared in. All the men and women seemed happy; I wondered if they were related or friends. I open my old toy chest and slip the deck inside the cardboard box containing my picture puzzles and cap pistols in a heap, things I didn't use anymore. I push the deck down until my hand touches bottom, sure that my mother will not search my discarded things.

I was confused about your touching me and resumed going up to the roof of our tenement to practice what I called fencing, especially parries and lunges. For a foil I used a piece of the rolltop from an old desk that I found behind city hall. I liked walking there among the fortressed official buildings with their battlements and loopholes. On our expansive roof, wearing my T-shirt with the crossed swords emblem, I imagined I was a hero—Tyrone Power or Errol Flynn leaping in blazing sunlight, sword in fist, thrusting, sometimes scaring me when he seemed about to be killed, finally overcoming the villain in black. He was deservedly happy and so was I.

One afternoon, while I'm practicing saying the French names for the tactical movements aloud, Felipa comes through the stairway door. She starts asking me questions, one after another.

"Why are you playing with a stick, Richard? Why are you playing by yourself? Do big people do it, too? I want to call you Richard. Ricardo's not American."

I feel interrupted. Also I like the name Ricardo that you gave me. I say, "Fencing's not for little girls. Go eat supper."

She laughs and dives into my groin with ten petite, fast-moving fingers while staring up into my face. Then she lets go, lifts her dress and commands,

"Do it to me, too. Do it. Do it."

We hear a squeal from the rusty hinges of the door to the roof. She lowers her dress with one pull, and I desperately hope everything looks normal. You walk onto the crunchy asphalt toward us, a tight blue T-shirt hugging your athlete's torso, and say, "Supper, Felipa, go downstairs." She runs to you, grabs your arm, twirls the silver snake bracelet on your wrist, and hugs and rubs your hand against her cheek.

"You ain't come in a week, Ricardo," you say. "We gonna eat now, but come in an hour, okay?" I nod eagerly. You make me feel more wanted than anybody probably ever has.

I'm sitting at our kitchen table, turning the pages in a magazine but not reading, just waiting to go to your apartment. The clock in our kitchen rounds seven—about one hour has passed. I don't know if I should wait longer. I fantasize the three of you eating spaghetti supper, hearing Dean Martin singing "Ritorn' a Me" and ice clinking in the pitcher of purple lemonade. I imagine Felipa annoying you and Mrs. D'Andrea by grabbing things from the table. I wonder if you ever ask Felipa to show you her GyroPaint pictures and demonstrate her whirling. I want to tell you she's going to be great at something if you let her, if you encourage her. But I'm afraid you'll get angry if I do.

I was an only child. Maybe an only child doesn't imagine much about what other children do unless it directly involves him. He often merely observes them, and they seem novel, like the unanticipated movements of wind-up toys. I sometimes imagined Felipa motionless like a toy after you slapped her on the arm or back, or shouted at her, and the spaghetti falling off her fork onto the floor, for which you'd blame her.

You open the door for me smiling, a cigarette between your lips, wearing a bathrobe with gold monograms and crimson lintels over the velvet pockets. Giuseppe di Stefano's voice singing "Core N'grato," is flowing from the phonograph: tu nun te ne cure, core, core n'grato—you don't care, heart, ungrateful heart.

Thinking that you're ready for bed, my spirits sink, anticipating rejection.

"I guess I'm too late," I say.

"No, no, caam in, Ricardo. You ain't late. You ain't never late. We eat slow 'cause my daughter was cryin' she don't unnerstand school. She don't unnerstand nothin' they teach!" You mash your cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen table, which makes the ice cubes clink in the pitcher of lemonade.

"I'ma takin' a shower now, so go talk to Charley," you say, pointing to the lone gray parrot in the cage near the window. "That goddam parrot he smart like you, know big words, too, some in Sishilyahn. Maybe he tell you some bad words 'cause my wife ain't around." Your English amused me but I but tried not to show it because I didn't want you to get annoyed and send me home.

"Where's Felipa?" I ask. "I can help her with school work."

"She away with tha mother," you say, untying the sash of your robe. "Mamma and daughter, you know." You hold up fingers pressed together. "Father stay home. He gotta work and bring tha money."

I am ready to ask why your family leaves you out, but I stop myself. It feels too personal.

You snap your towel at the wall where it makes a cracking sound and say, "Some day other guys is gonna take care my daughter, not me no more."

You go into the bathroom and close the door. I go over to Charley. He looks strange; most of his chest feathers are missing so that he skin looks like he's wearing a white jacket. He steps sideways on his perch, back and forth, repeatedly. I'm wondering, is he thinking of escape with all that pacing, even though he can't go anywhere because one leg is chained to the cage. I'm feeling terrible seeing Charley's frustration and what I'm sure is sheer misery.

The only sounds in the kitchen are the shower and "Core N'grato." My music teacher played it in class. She had let me listen to it alone in the music room after school, which is how I learned all the words.

You come out of the bathroom naked through clouds of steam that heat my skin. Charley screams.

"Shut you mouth," you shout back at him. And to me you say, smiling, "He gonna die soon."

You walk past me, towel around your muscular shoulders, toward the living room. Your torso has a bronze-red tint from working in the sun without a shirt, and it shines with oil. I could almost taste your cologne. I was amazed, a classical statue come to life.

"Caam in here, big Ricardo," you call. I walk through the living room. You are in the big bedroom drawing back the coverlet, exposing blue sheets. Then you lie down and prop yourself on an elbow and look into what appears to be a red-colored loose-leaf binder.

"Sit," you say smiling, and shift your legs to give me space on the bed. "Look."

I look at the binder. I see color photographs of naked women, men, girls, and boys. Collies, shepherds, and setters seem to be doing the same things with the women that the men are. One picture shows a sexually erect pony with its forelegs up on a box, standing over a woman spread-eagled on a red sheepskin rug. I could hardly believe such things existed and was flooded with wonder and excitement.

"Where'd it come from?" I ask. I was tempted to ask you to stop turning the pages so fast.

"Thas a secret. Ya like it. Yeah ya like it, don't ya? Sure ya do." "'Like,'" you said, but "you're captive" would have been more precise.

You open the book to where you are keeping your hand and spread it flat on the bed. There are three pictures on each page, each an oval decorated with colored scrolls and flowers around its frame, showing persons of both sexes, lying down, gratifying each other. There is a lot of red and gold.

"Thas arte!" you say. You turn onto your back, your head on a pillow, and with three fingers make your erect organ swing back and forth.

"Taste this," you say, smiling. "He taste good."

I want to please you but cannot do what you ask.

"C'maan, Ricardo. I get you a book like this."

I wonder how you know about the taste. I had no idea about the taste of your body, but smelling your odor—a mixture of flowers, mint and alcohol—I did not disbelieve you.

"I'ma clean, Ricardo. Nobody wash so much as me. "

You take hold of my arm and pull me down toward you. In my first years of elementary school my father sometimes held both my wrists in one hand and laughed until I gave up struggling to get free. He always won, but I loved the attention.

I did what you asked without a struggle. Joined to the entrancing floral scent was
the invading flavor of alcohol combined with a bitter hint of soap.

"More," you say. I obey but also reach out and put my hands on you. I make my flat palms slide up your belly and stop when I reach your nipples that had a firmness like young green peas. Your skin is silky wherever I touch it. My fantasy is that you are in my hands.

A string of pulsations and it's over. You rotate toward the night table, your back to me. Propped on an elbow, you light a cigarette and turn on the radio. The radio takes over the room:

"This is WPAT, Paterson. Your first choice on the air."

"What about me?" I ask.

You turn and peer at me with raised eyebrows, then reach for my belt and bring me relief. But you do not surround me with the arm that Felipa brought to her cheek and kissed that day on the roof. That may have been my second or third time experiencing ejaculation; a classmate had recently shown me how to do it while we stood at the urinals at school. I was grateful to him for doing that. But you bothered to soothe my need only because I asked.

"I'm gonna take a shower," you say. "Close the door hard behind you. Last time you didn't close it and a goddamn black cat come in. That animal give you evil eye."

"'Evil eye?'"

"See, you smart, but you don't know evil eye. Bye-bye."

As I walk out the door into the hallway, I see Mrs. D'Andrea crouching and picking up ears of corn that must have fallen from her shopping bag. It seemed that each time I saw her she was struggling with bags of laundry or groceries.

"Hello, Mrs. D'Andrea, " I say, trying to make my voice casual. "Can I help?"

"I don't need no help from you," she says, not looking up from the corn on the floor. "Maybe I'll cook 'em dirty. Your friend in there wouldn't know the difference. He don't know he's got a wife, either."

The taste and odor of another person's body came as a surprise to me. I believe a boy cannot divulge such a surprise if it's from a male, since such a thing is always called being "homo"and nobody wants to hear about it. And the boy absolutely must not tell if that experience is coupled with love. But he remembers everything. Including the closeness. It fills spaces.

The following day you surprise me by knocking at our door. I had told you that my parents arrived more than six hours after I returned from school. But even if they came back earlier, I am sure that when I opened the door you would have smiled and maybe asked if our apartment was getting enough heat or hot water. You could have said anything with that charm of yours and my parents would have suspected nothing.

"Wanna come for ride in my car?" you ask.

"Sure," I say eagerly.

A distant uncle of mine was the only one in the family who had a car, and I loved riding in it, no matter where we drove. I loved seeing greenery, pretty houses, kids playing in playgrounds, bridges, toll booths and gas pumps with their clinking and smell of gasoline. I imagined parents at home, eating, conversing with their children.

"I'm gonna go to my mother," you say in the car. "Then you and me, we go up Garrett Mountain and see this whole city."

Amazing. A car ride plus the whole city of Paterson from high up—two incredible events in one day! I imagined a visit to your family home, with everybody together there, because that's how I figured life was in Italian families. It would have been nice, super nice, but I didn't really expect it. I was happy just to go along and wait for you in the car.

Your four-door hydramatic Oldsmobile had cozy, cloth seats, and smelled of cologne and tobacco. A cross and Saint Christopher medal hung from the rear-view mirror, but you drove so fast that I was sure nothing would save us in a collision. I guess your style of driving made you use the horn a lot. It played the first five notes of O-So-Le-Mi-O. I thought that was funny. I also thought of saying something to you about the speed, but was afraid you would be displeased. I wanted you to remain happy that you had asked me to come along.

We drive to a neighborhood of one-family brick houses, each with a small lawn in front and separated from its neighbors by a driveway on each side. An old woman in black is standing near the gate to the house, watching the road.

"I come right back," you say, getting out. Then you turn, "Better you cam with me so she don't ask much questions."

You kiss the woman and say a few words in Italian. Then you introduce me in English as a neighbor's boy. The woman grabs your wrist and says something in Italian. She's entreating. You shake your head, "No time, mamma, we in a hurry," and you uncurl her fingers from your arm. "But maybe the boy is hungry," she says in insecure English. She turns to me, "I gotta nice macaroni with marinara, boy. You want?" Her smile multiplies the cobweb of wrinkles in her face and makes her beautiful.

"No, mamma," you reply for me. "We got no time I told you."

From where we are standing, I can see through the driveway to a vine trellis at the back of the house and, under it, tables and chairs. There was a similar scene on my Giuseppe di Stefano record cover. It shows him sitting outdoors at a table with people around him, smiling, dishes of pasta and bottles of wine in front of them. I loved everything about that singer, especially when I imagined having a life like his.

I was hungry, but I was expert at disregarding hunger when I was alone at home. We leave.

You don't speak the length of the ride. You drive up the blacktop to Garrett Mountain Ridge, turn off into a gravel clearing and park. I walk behind you on a narrow path that is hard to see in the growing darkness and step on the back of your shoe.

"Goddamn, use you eyes, them shoes is fifty dolla 'Floor Shines', " you growl.

"Sorry." I realize you mean "Florsheim," the expensive brand of shoes and feel like laughing, but don't.

Passing a smell of feces, we come up behind a billboard sign that is lit from the front, leaving our side in near darkness.

"Cool here," you say. Your voice is gritty. "Lots better." You step behind me and put your arms around me like the first time. "Look down there," you say. "Them lights is three city. Remind me Italy. You canna see that from tha roof where you go play."

The pressure from your arms and from your pelvis digging into my buttocks was painful. You went around to the front of me and pressed your fingers, especially your thumbs, into my arms.

"Thanks for the real nice ride," I say. "I need to go home now."

"First you do for me, too," you say and, using your free hand, you open your zipper. I try to get out of your painful grip, but you hold me firmly.

"Be good, Ricardo. I come up here special for you. I'ma tense. I work a lot. Gotta complainer wife." With your hand you turn me around like a top and I am facing an illuminated billboard on another hill that shows a beautiful woman in a fur coat with a small white dog in her arms.

"Look at that," you say. "Nice, ain't she? Think about her."

You push me into a kneeling position, then pull me toward you with one hand on the back of my head, the other gripping my shoulder.

"C'mon, do it, do it, goddammit, mannaggia!"

I do it. Fluid pumps into my mouth. I do not want it to slide into my throat and choke me, but your hand keeps me from moving away, and I am thinking please stop or I won't be able to breathe. I force myself to swallow. Then I pull away and draw in big mouthfuls of air. There is a burning sensation from my mouth into my throat.

"It's burning," I say, my voice sounding forward, I am thinking.

"No be crybaby sissy."

You kneel on one knee and worked on me with your mouth and hand. It is over quickly.

"Les go," you say. "I wanna listen to a race."

You draw out a small flashlight and snap it on. I follow awkwardly behind you, trying to use the poor light and your footsteps to guide me, working my fingers to close the buttons on my pants, and hoping my feet will not step on your shoe again.

"My mouth is burning," I say.

You drive without speaking toward downtown Paterson. It's a chilly night. I feel cold in just my cotton shirt, especially after the walk back to the car. I reach for the knob labeled heater on the panel in front of me.

"Don't touch. Heater don't work."

I withdraw my hand.

In a few more minutes we enter the city and you park in front of the Leggett pharmacy. You lead me to the long soda fountain and we take two stools. When you ask me, in front of the waiting counterman, what I want to drink, I try to imagine that you are a father asking his son his pleasure at the end of an evening out together. My father had once taken me to see The Thief of Baghdad, and I admired the boy-thief, Sabu, who was free to run and jump across rooftops. After the show, he asked me what I wanted and bought me the ice cream soda and slice of chocolate layer cake that I had asked for.

"Give 'im hot chocolate," you say.

"Very good, and for yourself, sir?"

"Nothin.'"

I drink the very hot chocolate slowly.

"Caam on," you say. "You ain't done yet?"

I sip more quickly but cannot find anything to say. I am confused and angry that you are so annoyed. I want to wash away whatever is burning my throat.

I don't reveal my angry thoughts during the ride home. I try to let the car's motor and street noises be the activity in my head, along with "tu nun ce pense, tu nun te ne cure, core, core n'grato." I am certain that you want to get rid of me and that if you could, you would dump me out of the car.

I didn't knock at your door after that night. Sometimes I felt like crying, but didn't because boys didn't cry. I spent more time with my turtle. I cut up bananas, put the pieces into his tank, and watched him grab them in his beak-like mouth. His eyes closed as he swallowed, so I imagined he was happy. As when he ate cherries and grapefruit. One evening I carry him outside to give him some fresh air near the deserted textile factories. I recognize your big Oldsmobile parked at the opposite curb. You are at the wheel, your arms around somebody that you are kissing. I imagine Spartacus chewing your penis off.

Keeping to my side of the street because I don't want you to see me, I walk up the hill and into the empty lot. I am sorry that Spartacus spends every day confined in his small tank, even though turtles live longer than people. So I set him or her on the ground in a clump of weeds and stay until he (I thought he was a boy turtle) walks away. I am hoping there is another turtle out there who will make him a good partner. The following week my father sold his business and we moved. Nobody ever called me Ricardo again.

For some time after that I thought about sitting next to you in your car. You at the wheel, the motor vrooming when you pedaled it, lights blinking on the panel. Then I would think that these thoughts were crazy, and that I didn't want to be with you ever again. It was confusing: you were a father, but you didn't provide what a father should. I wanted Felipa to be safe from your anger, but I lived pretty far away now, in another town, and had no way to return to Paterson. I could have taught her basic fencing moves. And the names I knew, like riposte, quinte, sixte. I would have liked to see her again in her paper tiara. She could have spun her hoop a thousand times and painted more GyroPaint pictures. I'd have taken her to Leggett's soda fountain and ordered anything we wanted, she and I.

I recalled all of this a few days ago while teaching my class. I also remembered your name: Marco Amando—Lover Warrior. I can imagine you now, still alive, telling some pretty young nurse that you were once a strong man who built cities and was loved. All of which is, of course, true.

 

©2002 David Schultz - Contributor's Bio